A Question of Trust
by bingblot
Summary: <html><head></head>A post-ep for 7x2, "Montreal." "Kate, I don't know how you can still trust me after this, I don't know how I can trust me after this." Castle tries to come to terms with what he learned.</html>


Disclaimer: If I owned "Castle,'' none of this would ever have happened.

Author's Note: A post-ep to 7x2, "Montreal," because this scene crawled into my head and demanded to be written.

**A Question of Trust**

He couldn't sleep.

Beside him, he could feel the warmth from Kate's body, just barely hear the sound of her steady breathing. All so familiar—amazingly, miraculously familiar. After all this time, there were moments when he still had to take a step back and marvel at the fact that Kate—_Kate_—was sleeping beside him, that hers was the last face he saw before falling asleep and the first one he saw when he woke up.

He turned his head to look at her. It was too dark for him to see her as anything more than a darker shadow but his memory easily filled in what she would look like, sleeping.

For what was maybe the millionth time, he wondered what the last two months had been like for her—and then wondered what on earth could possibly have made him leave her on their wedding day and then not contact her at all for two months.

He felt as if the short—too short—videos he had left for his mother, for Alexis, for Kate were running through his head in an endless loop of confusion and regret.

Accepting that sleep wasn't going to happen, he carefully edged away from Kate, slowly moving the hand that had been resting on his chest to the bed. He waited for a few seconds, not daring to breathe, but she slept on and he slowly, slowly slid the rest of the way off the bed.

He silently crept out of his bedroom and out into the living room, sitting down heavily on the couch.

Two _months_.

What had he done? What could possibly have kept him from his family, from Kate, for that long without a word? What had he been involved with that he recorded those videos intended to be messages from beyond the grave?

His hand brushed across the spot on his ribs where he had the new, unfamiliar scar, a mark of being grazed by a bullet. What had happened to him?

While a small part of him had been almost relieved, in an odd way, to have no memory of the last two months—whatever else, he couldn't imagine that two months of being away from his family, from Kate, had been anything less than agonizing—now, knowing that he had _asked_ to have his memories removed, he felt as if he no longer knew who he was.

What had he done? What terrible, awful, heinous thing had he done that he had decided he didn't want to know it?

Some mysteries aren't meant to be solved, the fake Henry Jenkins had said. Except he didn't believe that. He couldn't—could he?

He tried to think of what could possibly have kept him away from Kate, from Alexis, for two months, what he could possibly have deemed a good reason for that—he felt a chill spreading inside him. It wasn't that he couldn't imagine reasons—he could—but none of the answers he came up with were of the sort that made him like himself. Murder, criminal conspiracies, treason… All the possibilities were the sort of thing to make him question everything he thought he knew about himself, about the type of person he was. It had to have been dangerous—his hand brushed again against the new scar on his ribs—and almost certainly illegal—he couldn't think of another reason why he wouldn't have told Kate. Protecting his mother, protecting Alexis, from something dangerous—that, he could understand. Not to have told Kate—that seemed to mean it must have been something he absolutely didn't want her to know, something to destroy her trust in him, her feelings for him…

But then how could he have done it? He _loved_ Kate, loved her in a way he'd never loved anyone, in a way that made him rather guiltily aware that what he'd once felt for Kyra, for Meredith, for Gina, hardly merited the word. And Kate's trust, her love, were the most precious things in the world to him, meant more to him than anything with the exception of Alexis's love and trust—and he couldn't imagine anything that would have made him risk losing that, losing her.

What had he done? What had he been involved in?

He was abruptly distracted from his whirling, increasingly unpleasant thoughts, when he sensed her presence. He was suddenly nervous, afraid to look at her with this new terror that whatever he'd done, it was something that would drive her away from him.

He was relieved when she didn't speak but then she joined him on the couch, curling up beside him, leaning against him, with a kind of boneless ease that made his heart flip. She settled next to him, rearranging his arm around her and keeping her fingers laced with his. Another moment passed in silence—he couldn't have spoken if his life had depended on it for the sudden lump of emotion clogging his throat—and then she reached over to bring his other arm around her, arranging them so she was snugly ensconced in his arms.

And he wondered if his heart might actually burst in his chest. Oh God oh God oh God, he found himself praying desperately to whatever higher powers might be listening, that whatever he had done, whatever he had been involved with, he wouldn't lose her because of it. He _couldn't_ lose her, couldn't lose this, that _she_, Kate Beckett, trusted him enough to relax in his arms like this. She let out a soft sighing breath and then he heard her mumble, "I can't sleep well without you in the bed."

He sucked in his breath and stiffened, suddenly hating himself. How could he have done this to her, how could he have left her? "Kate, I…" he almost choked on his guilt, on his fear.

He felt the increase of tension in her body, the return to full awareness. "It's okay, Castle, I didn't mean—I was only thinking about tonight, not about… I wasn't trying to guilt you, Castle."

"Kate, I… I don't know how you can still trust me after this, I don't know how _I_ can still trust me after this," he blurted out. "How can you trust me knowing that whatever I did, it was so terrible that I didn't even want to remember it, that I wanted it wiped from my memory?"

She was silent and he suddenly wanted to kick himself, bash his own head against the wall. Why why _why_ had he said all that, asked her that, as if he _wanted_ her to distrust him, as if he was trying to make her doubt him? Damn stupid _idiot_ that he was!

She was still silent and he wondered a little crazily if this was what it felt like to bleed out, to know you were losing your life blood with every beat of your heart but unable to stop it. His arms loosened and then started to fall away but before he could let her go, she grabbed his hands, bringing them back to where they had been, keeping his arms around her. She didn't let him let her go.

She stopped the bleeding.

"Castle…" Her voice was a little muffled, as she turned her face into his shoulder, kept it there for a moment before she turned her head but otherwise stayed leaning against him. "I know I can trust you because of all that we've been through together." She paused and then added softly, "I know I can trust you because for four years, you were right there waiting for me, even as I tried to push you away. I can trust you because for four years, you brought me coffee just to see a smile on my face." He heard her smile in her tone before she went on, seriously, "For four years, you were my friend and my partner and you _loved_ me even when I didn't let you in."

His heart heard the echo of the words he'd once said to her and understood it, even before his brain caught up, and he could have cried at this declaration of trust, the way she'd resurrected what had been the most painful moment in their relationship and made it beautiful, heart-warming. "Beckett," he managed to say, his voice slightly shaky in spite of all his effort to sound like his usual self, and using her work name because he knew there was no way he would manage to say this if he called her Kate, "if this is your way of telling me you're going to need another four years to learn to trust me again…"

He heard her smile again in her voice, even through the emotion roughening up her voice. "What, Castle, you won't wait another four years for me?"

His arms tightened around her in a rather convulsive motion. "I would wait for you forever," he declared with sudden intensity. "I would wait as long as you needed to trust me again."

"I trust you now, Castle," she interrupted him quietly. "I didn't ask for a month because I don't trust you. I said one month because I want our wedding just to be about us, a perfect day."

"You're sure, Kate? Even knowing that I was involved in something so terrible I decided not to remember it, something so awful I decided I was better off not knowing about it?" _How can you trust me so much? _He didn't know why he was asking this, saying all this, questioning her again. What was he doing, to be repeatedly sawing away at the branch he was sitting on like he was some cartoon character, as if he was trying to sabotage himself?

She sighed, moving her head to drop a kiss on his shoulder. "I can't say that it doesn't bother me at all. I can't say that I don't wonder about it. Of course I wonder about it, of course I want to know, but Castle, I _trust_ you. If you decided that you were better off not remembering, you must have had a damn good reason for it and that's enough for me."

"I'm afraid the reason I had was that I thought whatever I did would make you hate me," he admitted, very quietly. "And I don't want to lose you, I _never_ want to lose you."

He sensed her slight smile and he drew back to stare at her. He couldn't imagine what he'd just said that might make her smile.

"That's how I know I can trust you."

"What?"

"The fact that you're so afraid that you _might_ have done something that would make me hate you tells me that I can trust you."

"I don't… What?"

"Someone who was capable of betraying me like that, of deliberately choosing to hide something to avoid losing me, wouldn't be tormented at the thought that he might have done something like that. If you were capable of doing something heinous in the first place, you wouldn't be so panicked now that you might have done something heinous."

That… made a certain amount of sense, circular and convoluted as it sounded. He felt something inside him that had been clenched since the moment he'd heard what the fake Henry Jenkins had to say begin to loosen.

It wasn't her reasoning alone that comforted him, that convinced him, but the fact that _she_, Kate Beckett, had said it, that she believed it. She, who was cautious, who was skeptical, who was so quick to question, so slow to trust… She trusted him—and he trusted her. Oddly—or maybe not oddly at all, in some ways, it made perfect sense— he trusted her more than he trusted himself.

_Kate Beckett trusted him. _

He tightened his arms around her, kissing her hair. "You amaze me sometimes, you know that?"

"Only sometimes?"

He laughed softly. "Fishing for compliments, Detective?"

"Why, yes, Mr. Castle, I am."

He laughed again. God, he loved her, loved her like this, loved her when she was playful and flirtatious and so… _open_… He suddenly thought of how, well, prickly she had been when they had first met, how long it had taken for her to let down her guard around him. And while he'd been attracted by her, fascinated by her, from the beginning, it had been from that sense, that knowledge, that there was so much more she could be, that _they_ could be, if she would let him in—and now, he knew and it was more than he had ever imagined it could be. _She_ was more than he had even imagined, was all he wanted in his life. And for once, he couldn't respond to her playfulness with humor.

"You amaze me every day," he told her softly and entirely seriously. "You amaze me with your strength and your courage and your trust and your warmth."

She let out a rather shaky sigh. "Oh Rick…"

She turned her face up to his and he lowered his to kiss her, softly, tenderly, with all the love he felt, all the love he would always feel. And he knew that he could accept the missing months of his memory, come to terms with the fear of what he might have done—he could accept _anything_ as long as he still had her, as long as she would stay with him like this, trust him enough to relax in his arms like this.

When the kiss ended, she settled her head against his shoulder again while he rested his cheek against her hair. They stayed like that for a long time, for long enough that it started to feel as if their bodies might be solidifying, merging together. For long enough that her voice when she spoke, as soft as it was, startled him almost as much as a cymbal crashing by his ear would have.

"Let's go back to bed, Rick."

"I suppose we should," he agreed rather ruefully, knowing from experience that if he stayed where he was and fell asleep, he would wake up stiff and sore.

She uncurled herself and stood up first and then held out her hand. He looked up at her, met her eyes in the dimness, and grasped her hand with his before he stood up as well.

And hand in hand, they returned to his bedroom.

And finally, his body curled around Kate's, his hand holding hers, listening to the steady sound of her breathing, he managed to sleep.

_~The End~_

Author's Note: Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think!


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